Coconut fail

Insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results, and for some insane reason I keep trying to act like coconut flour can easily replace other flours. It doesn’t work.

At all.

I’m on a major tortilla kick -well, my whole life is a major tortilla kick- and was really wanting to make some beloved quinoa pita tortillas. Alas, we were out of quinoa flour, but I had a giant bag of unused coconut flour. (I think I should have realized that I never use coconut flour because it never turns out the way I expect. Like these sad pancakes.)

“That will totally work!”

Except not.

I mixed the coconut flour with water and a little sea salt,

it crumbled in the pan.

Added egg whites and baking powder,

it crumbled in the pan.

[This is sounding like really bad poetry at this point, haha]

Livi and I ate this one covered in maple syrup.

It was good, but I think I can successfully say that about anything edible covered in maple syrup.

Then I added a lot more egg whites -I had a whole carton that I’m kind of bummed ended up being wasted- and still didn’t work.

And, in a last-ditch effort to keep the ingredients from being wasted, I tried to turn it into this recipe (another favorite) by adding a splash of apple cider vinegar, honey, almond meal, poured it into a loaf pan and said a prayer.

Meet the crumbly loaf that never held together, destined for the trash can.

Since I have no coconut flour tortilla recipe, I would just recommend making this. Or this. Or this. Or keep buying tortillas pre-made at Trader Joe’s like I will be doing 😉

After my domino effect of cooking fails, I had a glass of wine.

The end.

Any coconut flour recipes you can recommend? Do you ever make homemade breads or tortillas? Any cooking fails lately?

I once tried to make a gluten free pizza dough on a pizza stone — problem was that it was really a “batter” not a “dough”, and so it stuck to the pizza stone. The whole thing ended up in the trash — pizza stone and all. Not my finest kitchen moment!

Love this! Trying to go paleo, and trying to coconut ( people blog about their delicious coconut creations, but my husband said my cookies tasted like wet, dry crumbly mashed potatoes) but freaking yuck. Pretty much this post is my life. I think the trick is using it with other flour. I hear almond flour is great! Thanks for not making me feel like the only one who can’t bake with coconut.

Here are is my page of Paleo recipes: http://eating4balance.wordpress.com/recipes/gapsscdpaleo/
The apple crumbly bread, blueberry muffins, banana bread, pear crisp, paleo mcgriddles, apple and pan-perfect pancakes all use coconut flour. I love how much moisture it can hold. Combined with sunflour or almond flour it’s great too. And the banana bread uses only coconut flour, no almond or anything else!

I thought it was just me, especially since I bake vegan so I was thinking maybe it was the absence of the egg. I will say I have had a lot more success when I combined almond and coconut flour, but not coconut alone (even if it does taste good).

Hi Gina,
You cannot sub 1:1 coconut flour, it will crumble because of its extremely high fibre content. It absorbs a LOT of liquid, considerably more than any other (I use 1:1 flour to liquid always…sometimes 1:2 (2 parts liquid).

The texture and fibre content being what it is (imagine making a tortilla with broccoli powder – not going to work), I always sub 20-25% coconut flour and retain whatever other kind of flour in the recipe, whenever I’m using coconut flour. I have had a decent amount of success with adding fresh coconut to the recipe, because interestingly enough, it adds moisture without taking away from the fibre part of the coconut, and without having to add too much liquid.
Try it!

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